Surprisingly, I caught on pretty fast, considering the fact that the days are largely alien to Kenya and its people.
My rationalization for the quick assimilation has been that the loneliness and realization that all the things my parents talked endlessly about as I half listened live with me. Perhaps I should have listened better but this sentimentalism should not, however, be read into as regret of my rebellious adolescent years. I still cherish them, for they largely contributed to who I am today.
Whis brought up an important issue on the last post - CFLs in Uganda. Namely that CFLs contain mercury, a heavy metal that is quite toxic and dangerous if not disposed of properly. A common concern is mercury in fish which results in the advisory for pregnant women to avoid eating fish. I decided to buy a CFL since my desk lamp light blinked out and in the process try to answer Whis’ question about disposal. Home Depot, $5 dollars for 1 40watt bulb and i was set.
CFL front 
What i was able to find on the package no less, is that in North America, lamprecycle.org is a great resource, it has the state and EPA regulations for disposal of spent lamps. It also points to Earth911 where you can enter your zip code and it gives you the location of your local recycling center.
As for Uganda: I am afraid Whis i do not know…couldnt find a website for now, the other ministries appear to have a site but not the Energy ministry. Info from anyone there on the ground is greatly appreciated.
Daud in Kenya also pointed to the launch of PANARECC
Panerecc Launched at the Grand Regency on Thursday 26th April 2007
The Parliamentary Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change (PANERECC) is a proposed Parliamentary network to promote renewable energy and climate change policy and particularly the synergy between New and Renewable Energy (NRE) as a tool for combating climate change
As of this posting I am getting a 401 error on their site, so check it again later.
Other Stuff
Tech/Internet - Its a bad URL world out there i.e malicious code can found on the URLs of sites …so get Finjan secure browsing addon for firefox. (Yes i know that attempt at channeling 3-6 mafia was lame oh i will say its maxi priest “Uuu baby its a wild world ” Bugger, that aint it either, i am leaving it in the post despite its hobbliness.)
Econ -2 links to articles by James Shikwati, he is one of the speakers in the upcoming TED Global. Link 1 on harmonisation of tax laws in the EAC with the somewhat hilarious question “Will the East African Federation increase the size of matoke on our plates?” Link 2 - “Urbanizing Kenya to fight poverty”. Speaking of urbanization and poverty, Atanu Dey has excellent posts on this very issue.
Music and TV (Diaspora US): VH1 soul has a cool program One Planet One soul, airs on sundays. Soul from Africa and aroung the world. Likes of Les Nubians, Somi etc. This was also mentioned over at Annansi Chronicles, a very cool blogger and designer, check out the blog here and the cool afrocentric tshirts here. If you arent subscribed to Benn Loxo yet and you are a world music fan…what you waiting for?! Gems on that site i tell you.
Annoyances: SMSs asking you to not buy gas/petrol on May 15th. Here is the snopes entry debunking that urban legend.
Last but not least, thanks for reading this far… and Happy Mothers day to all moms, especially our fellow bloggers who are new moms, KP, Mrembo and Medusa.
There was an article in the local newspaper the other day where the State of Bremen asked its readers to volunteer for today’s election day. I quickly downloaded the application form from the inet and applied for that position as I always wanted to do that kind of work.
Such a one-day job actually includes arriving at the polling station as early as 7.30 am and supporting the election official until all votes are registered, which means you’re home at about 9 pm.
Despite of being interested in that kind of work, I also wanted to see WHO actually lives in this area which had been my interim home during 1983-1990 - and since I had just returned to a familiar place for the first time in my life, a place I am sometimes ready to accept as my “base station”, I thought it would be great to see some familiar faces from the past.
Besides, there’s EUR 30,- incentive at the end of the day, and in my Kenyanesque brainstructures, this equals to around Kshs. 2700/= for a day of just sitting on a desk and making sure that ppl drop their votes. Dude, could I ask for more? Simple!

So what’s the difference?
Besides of different procedures (voters get their electoral card sent through normal snail mail and have to deliver either this card or their ID card in order to vote), one thing remains as an amusing fact.
Well, can u see that long bench in the middle of the floor? We used it to divide the room into two areas for each electoral district, but ppl here - for some peculiar reason - apparently saw this as a challenge to change lines a.k.a. districts and consequently line up for another district. They just jumped over the bench as if they were back in school (the building is a primary school).
==> Whereas you’d probably see an askari with a rungu in Kenya, making sure that ppl keep order, there was no order here, just unbelievably “smart” people (~ 5% of them having a PhD) who apparently thought to be smarter than the rest by jumping over the bench the line. Idiots.
Needles to mention that the majority of the electorate in this district voted for a very conservative party. I guess this goes to show the actual meaning of permanent head damages (phd). ^^
The problem with many ppl is their inability to think in juristic terms - putting your vote on a piece of paper isn’t voting but instead dropping that vote into a sealed box and getting your name registered as having voted. The consequence of this misunderstanding is that they put every emphasis on marking their cross on that piece of paper, but when it comes to the actual process of registering your vote, many voters today just wondered about this extra hassle.
And yes, it was a nice experience today and I would do it again any other day. It’s a good feeling to be living in a society where ppl actually care about each other, and despite of these somewhat peculiar relicts of German history, I appreciate being part of the system, even if its just for one day.
Of course I just had to close the day with Bremen’s best product: Beck’s Gold! :-)

Heute in meiner alten Grundschule entdeckt. :-)
A Kikuyu, a Luhya and a Persian are standing outside Nakumatt Prestige at 8pm. Which one is selling popcorn, which one is eating popcorn, which one is watching?
I am an information junkie. I used to be one of those people with a million different email subscriptions flying into my email inbox each day. News lists, global security information lists, sports, technology, you name it I had it. One day last year I revolted and unsubscribed to all of them except two. Why? First of all it was information overload! Secondly the growth and wide availability of RSS feeds and other ways to get information means I no longer need to fill my email inbox to get the information I want. Now I am signed up to only two daily email lists on my main email account and both are vital reading and if you don’t have them you should get them!
One is The Global Voices daily digest (blogs) written by David Sasaki and his bunch of merry men and women. The other is The Fiver (football) written by a bunch of nutters in Fiver Towers. (OK I admit I do have one or two other weekly email subscriptions that such a pillar of society such as myself has no business reading, step forward Holy Moly!) What lists out there are worth a look.
So which RSS Feeds am I reading or do I think are worth reading, or do I feel I should be reading? All is revealed on the MentalGator. Yeah I noticed some of you noticing my site pulling your feeds and was bound to oust me before long so I might as well publicise it. It is quite small, I will try to keep it under 30 feeds, unlike the monster that is the KENYAUNLIMITED AGGREGATOR! It is rough around the edges, needs a serious css over haul and some options need changing but it will do for now. If this all works out then, I’ll change the software that powers the KenyaUnlimited aggregator to this one.
It’s been a while since I shook with laughter while reading a blog post but Greg Black got me laughing and holding my head at the same time while I was reading this.
The guys at Very Sawa Technology Studios are on to something with the launch of Jahazi. When you have White African, Kobia, JKE, and the Skunkworks crew all ooohing and ahhhing over one of your products its time to start thinking about an IPO.
And finally
KBW exists. And KBW exists primarily because its members want it to exist and contribute to help it exist in various ways, not because Mentalacrobatics started it or the KBW Admin Team helps sustain it, although those are factors as well. If KBW members do not want KBW to exist it will not. It really is a simple as that. That is why, at the end of the day, my opinion on each and every attack on KBW is not that important and why I will not comment on each and every blog post that mentions KBW negatively.
If KBW loses credibility then bloggers will simply leave KBW and no others will join. In the same way, if the Admin Team can not be trusted then KBW members will simply stop conferring with, contributing to and indeed trusting that Admin Team.
I can tell you honestly that when I fire up Thunderbird each morning the KBW admin email address is the most active of all the email addresses and of those messages new member registration and new members requesting assistance take up a healthy number. Do not take my word for it, look for yourself.
KBW does have its share of yahoos. What is healthy is that we all have different opinions on what constitutes a yahoo, and believe me I have my opinion as well. I can take the personal attacks, they stopped bothering me a long time. (When cartoons email your parents to inform them that their son is confusing the youth of Kenya on behalf of StateHouse and should be arrested – you learn to laugh at life – otherwise you can go mad).
This does raise interesting questions on the issue of ownership of the Kenyan blogosphere. Methinks I have just found the right topic for my next podcast.
I was talking last night with another veteran of Kenyan online communities and we were reflecting about the back-in-the-day days. If it is beef and “online war” you are after let me tell you right now KBW is the wrong place to look. We are but a bunch of amateurs.
In 1997 as an innocent 1st year undergrad I joined an online community called KenyaOnline. Walalala. VITA! This was just before the 1997 general election and I tell you MPs, aspiring MPs, their cronies, even MINISTERS (apparently writing anonymously – remind you of anything) were all throwing, what the KOL community called, online rungus at each other. I must admit I found it brilliant to start of with.
By the time 2002 had come along and those same wazee, wabunge and wamweshimwas were still throwing insults at each other it had become tiring. However things mellow out and KenyaOnline is still going strong in its current incarnation on yahoo groups.
Any of you who were around for the drama on mlevi.com, rcbown.com – remember when rcbowen was THE Kenyan page on the internet – if you weren’t in his guest book then you basically didn’t exist online – and even at the height of drama on mashada.com then you know that KBW is a relatively stable place and actually quite quiet in comparison.
There many who like to cultivate a them and us mentality about this whole online thing. The KBW Admin Team is always accessible, if you have any concerns then you know where to find us.
With our numbers growing and our membership diversifying, with the power or blogs increasing and recognition of bloggers growing day by day I am confident, as I always have been from that day 1 when I was the ONLY member of KBW, that this project that we are all involved in, is here to stay.
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To truly appreciate the miracle of flight you need to fly a distance that you travel regularly by other means. Flying to the United Kingdom or the United States from Kenya, well, that’s the only way to get there so we can be excused in getting complacent! But flying from Nairobi to Kisumu, now that is an eye opening experience.
I have ranted before about driving to western Kenya. The roads are terrible, car breaking, and dangerous to drive on and that’s just the tarmac. The parts that are not tarmaced are not just car breaking but body breaking too. After that 8 hour drive you step out of the car and your spine feels like it is going to snap. (Spare a thought for the commercial vehicle and public transport drivers who do that route several times a week some even twice a day.)
And then there is flying. You get into your seat, you take off, and half an hour later you land in Kisumu! It still boggles my mind to this day at how simple and easy that trip is compared to the alternatives! Once when we called my brother who had dropped us at JKIA to tell them him we had landed in Kisumu safely we found that even had not even reached the Nyayo Stadium round about!
As soon as the plane touched down in Kisumu on Thursday I heard something I have not heard in a plane since the late 1980s. Applause. The whole cabin broke out in applause. KQ507 has re-awoken the appreciation, constantly taken for granted, for a safe trip.
A big thank you to everyone who has left a tribute, linked to, and help spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site. A big thank you to Fareed, Vincent and all guys and gals at the Capital FM Breakfast Crew for responding. Thanks to Ndesanjo and Global Voices for spreading the word. An extra big thank you to the family members and friends of the passengers and the crew who have left tributes, man, they are moving.
One thing this tragedy has brought home to me is just how connected we all are. I have had emails from Nigerian, Ethiopian, American, British and Indian friends all telling me how they have been personally affected by the flight. We live in a global village.
As a kid it really used to irritate me that the call signal for Kenya Airways was KQ and not KA as Dragon Air had got to it first. I used to feel we were dissed being sent all the way down to KQ what happened to KB KC KD etc I would ask. But now in my old age, KQ has a regal almost mystical tone to it. Kaaaay Kyooou. Nice!
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I have a dream, that rogue journalism will one day seize and JUSTICE shall be projected on our screens.
Here I quote CNN's coverage:
Lunch date I'd accept any day